Members Making Change with the Power of Our Contract

Notification

Our hard-earned contract, won after months of bargaining and the threat of a strike, and ratified just a year ago, is paying dividends beyond the many gains we achieved in wages, career development and upward mobility, and safer workplaces.

Those dividends are Joint Labor Management Committees (JLMC) and Task Forces (JLMTF), a benefit we negotiated as part of the contract that enables us to continue making changes and improvements in the years in between bargaining.

“We’re taking action now on a wide range of issues that affect different bargaining units, state agencies and, in some cases, all 96,000 members we represent,” said Margarita Maldonado, Vice President for Bargaining.

These committees and task forces are just part of a multi-pronged effort our union is undertaking— driven by members to make real gains for state workers and all Californians. We’re engaging members at our worksites, in the communities they live and at the government level as well.

We’re fighting for economic justice for all members with our GeoPay Task Force, a group of six members from across the state working with a group of state agencies to examine the high cost of living that state workers encounter in six different areas, which include housing, transportation, child care, health care and comparable wages.

In another example, we’re working with the state to stop the abuse and bring an end to the dangerous practice of mandatory over time that creates unsafe conditions for our Registered Nurses and Licensed Vocational Nurses working prisons and in institutions.

More than 8,000 Information Technology workers stood strong during the hard-fought IT Reclass efforts, which brought current decades-old job specifications into modern times. Their work continues to bring salaries for the new classifications equally current.

There are many more such efforts across our union. Unit 15, our Allied Service Workers, is working to improve conditions and create upward mobility for food service workers, laundry workers and civil service custodians.

Other examples include a JLMC at the Department of Justice (working conditions), a JLMTF at the Department of Veterans Affairs (working conditions) and a joint committee that oversaw the restructure of BOE into the new CDTFA.